Fool's Paradise
by Rot-Chan
Summary: The young teacher didn't want to be 'Miss Haruno' to him . . . but Sakura, sexy, alluring, red lipstick and short skirt Sakura. SasuSaku. slight teacherxstudent romance; AU. Updated -- Part 3 is posted.
1. Chapter 1

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**Fool's Paradise**

by Shelby

summary: she didn't want to be 'Miss Haruno' to him . . . but Sakura, sexy, alluring Sakura. AU. Konoha high school fic.

rating: T (15+)

setting: konoha high (AU)

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"I don't want to repeat my innocence.

I want the pleasure of losing it again."

-from _This Side of Paradise_ by F. Scott Fitzgerald

---

When he was first placed in her sixth period English class, Miss Haruno had been a bit … surprised. He was obviously different from the other students, stuck out like a sore thumb, actually.

Still. She hadn't been expecting this.

Creamy colored skin, smooth, unmarred (how many teenaged boys has Miss Haruno seen with skin problems, the common ailment of adolescence?)

Dark, blue-tinted hair that spiked almost humorously, long bangs framing his face (had she ever seen such hair on any student male or female?)

But it was truly his eyes – dark, obsidian, endless, with gray sunflowers around his pupils.

Gorgeous.

To him, she wanted not to be Miss Haruno. She wanted to be _Sakura_, sultry and beautiful Sakura, lacy black bra and red lipstick Sakura.

Perhaps it was wrong, terrible that Miss Haruno gave her favorite student an A on papers about topics she knew he hated, had heard him say he didn't like in as few words as possible when she inquired to all of her students what they thought of the reading material. Downright inexcusable that she asked him to stay after class to help her with some things when he agreed silently, looking at her with eyes that stirred something deep within the corners of her mind, _hungry_. Or were those eyes only in her imagination?

The year, what was left of the year, went much too quickly. Her calendar, with daily literary quotes she often read aloud to her students to quiz them upon the authors, was growing thinner with a vengance to her sexual curiosity.

A curiosity for him. Uchiha Sasuke.

How Sakura wished she could see him, not see him as a student, but truly see Sasuke – wanting her. But what a funny thought it was! She was 25 (he was 17). Her boyfriend was generous, and kind, but didn't touch her the way that she pictured how her student would touch her, gaze at her, ravish her. It was his eyes that did it. It was . . . funny. Hilarious. Delightful. As many adjectives as she knew.

Then, there was one day, a peculiar day. Such peculiar days are so odd, so filled with strangeness that often one knows that a day will be out of the ordinary when one first awakes.

This day was very peculiar, for Miss Haruno was not at all as busy as she should have been on a Thursday afternoon. Her manilla To-Do folder was not fat with to-dos; quite a few students were missing due to a sports event at a rival high school, and a final drama club practice that fell upon that same day.

Something felt quite different, though the young teacher didn't know what – until she saw him, her Favorite Student who was sadly not the teacher's pet (though with this realization their interactions became even more interesting and thrilling, for he did not worship her at all.)

His dark hair was neatly gelled, dark eyes slightly bruised with fatigue, pale skin still radiant without flush. He wore a suit, for he was somehow forced to be involved with representing the school's fencing team, had to go to the meet that day, returned to her class twenty minutes before the bell.

With his arrival, her heart turned with joy, though what troubled her occasionally was that with this feeling, the guilt never came. This feeling was familiar, had been for the past four months, like something comforting and old Sakura could cling to.

It was the last class of the day – the drama club would put on their show for the next hour and a half, for seventh and eighth period.

She could barely teach, feeling his eyes trained on her the entire class. Miss Haruno barely caught her own mistake when she spelled PRETENTIOUS incorrectly, when they were putting their adjective of the day up on the board.

The bell rang. She stacked their home work assignments neatly and fixed the desk in the first row.

"Miss Haruno."

The teacher's heart turned again. She slowly met Sasuke's eyes.

"Yes, Sasuke? Is there something you and I need to discuss?" When was the last time they spoke? It felt like too long, but it had only been a few days.

Outside, the hallway buzzed with excitement from being let free, as everyone was instructed to go to the auditorium for Oliver! immediately.

"Graduation is coming. I . . . thought I would ask you if you had any ideas for the end of the year Senior assignment." His voice was low, rumbled sensually – did Sakura imagine this? - in his chest, and he took a few steps closer.

"Of course. What do you need to know?" She barely recognized her own voice.

Five steps closer.

"I want to know. Why do you look at me so … ?"

So he knew. Clever boy.

Sakura gently took off her reading glasses and folded them onto her shirt, leaned against the whiteboard.

"So . . ."

Sasuke was growing frustrated. She knew that the typical 'high school' things – dates, friends, sports – probably . . . annoyed him. Or at least seemed annoying.

Sasuke was always annoyed about something.

"Like you _want_ something from me."

These words sparked a tiny, tiny flame in her chest. And then the guilt crashed down, like a huge wave, reminding her of the summers of her childhood when she was at the seaside and got sucked when she went out too far in the water. Guilt, guilt for dreaming – wanting another man, who was barely 18 no less! Even when she was already devoted, claimed, had a _job._

She was Miss Haruno to him. Nothing more, nothing less.

The flame died, but just barely, a tiny kindling remained.

"I just want . . . a petite, petite kiss."

There was a tiny glint of shock in her student's eyes, but Miss Haruno only smiled softly when he leaned forward and slowly pressed his lips to her cheek, close to her mouth, too close.

"Now leave me alone . . . Miss Haruno." A voice, almost strangled, restrained, strangely quiet. Was it his voice at all?

Was that hurt inside? No. Nothing was there._ Boyfriend, career, teacher, student, job. _

Stroking his cheek with her hand, long manicured daggers. "Of course, Uchiha."

Loving the name as she spoke it on her lips. The last thought before he slowly, than quickly, walked away for forever.

---

Graduation day, a happy day, a day of regrets and the past and hastily approaching future.

Sakura watched him, watched him go. Remembered her feelings. Held them close, and smiled inside wickedly, knowing Sasuke would remain her favorite fantasy, a boy with sunflower-gray eyes.

---


	2. Chapter 2

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**Fool's Paradise**

by Shelby

summary: she didn't want to be 'Miss Haruno' to him . . . but _Sakura_, sexy, alluring Sakura. AU. Konoha high school fic.

rating: T (15+)

setting: konoha high (AU)

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"Ah, but let her cover the mark as she will,

the pang of it will be always in her heart."

- from _The Scarlet Letter _by Nathaniel Hawthorne

---

The years went by. Or maybe it was only a year. Miss Haruno couldn't tell. Everything blurred together and became . . . incomprehensible.

Through the engagement to the boring, wealthy man so she could settle down and follow the secret plan of her mother and her mother's mother – have a nice house, a baby, a family – and the long hours of paperwork, Sakura would imagine, and grow lost.

It was strange at first, really. When she became quite bored, without a new novel to read, with her infamous red pen dried up and no papers left to grade, and with Kenji (the fiance) out of the house, she was often left to ponder over her thoughts.

Beautiful gray eyes.

Troubling. It was troubling. Sasuke was gone, her student, he was her student. Had been her student.

But he consumed her thoughts, dragged her deeply into an endless well where he was the only thing that mattered, the absolute only thing, despite the students who were failing and the man who was trying to grow closer but was instead slowly pushed away.

She had felt almost empty without her favorite student, almost wishing she had never felt the slight chapped softness of his lips against her face, had never breathed in his musky, natural scent.

But with her thoughts, Sasuke, in her own special way, had come back.

So Sakura let him.

A frequent dream – Sasuke . . . becoming a businessman now. Going to become an affluent (one of her favorite adjectives since high school) corporate figure who could first represent Konoha City, then the whole country! An amazing feat, nothing too large for him to tackle.

In her other daydreams, Sasuke was a lawyer, looking as handsome as he was in that same suit from a small classy department store, standing and prosecuting the defendant. Arguing his case, pointing out the exhibit A and B, persuading the judge with his charm and intelligence.

But perhaps secretly, though it was quite impractical and made her blush, _laugh_ even, he was her husband, or at least her lover, walking in from a management job at five in the afternoon and greeting her with his warm hands on the small of her back, never quite kissing her lips.

It was unlike Kenji, who always said it, three words, and wanted them back - he was selfish. But Sasuke was different – would be different. He would not need words or something stupid Sakura hated like Valentines cards or roses or scented candles to be happy. He would want her, want her body and her fingers through his hair, his lips against her breast, her lips upon his -

But then reality struck. The fantasy of Sasuke's love (or was it lust?) ended with the small black box.

With the ring – it was gorgeous!, the women in her family proclaimed when they saw 4 carats – and the question. And her words tumbled out, the smiling almost cracking her face, painful.

Sakura, for much of her life, always had the sad strange habit of meaning 'no' when she said 'yes.'

Although . . . it was, truthfully, the best thing to do. The right thing.

"Security, a nice house, nice wedding . . . nice . . . . hmm," Sakura voiced her thoughts as she chewed on the tip of her pencil, barely aware she was speaking to herself in empty classroom 202, the clock reading 4:35.

This year she had agreed to teach in a different classroom, for English, but for British American Literature, strictly a sophomore class.

September was of course, a slow and long first month. Her new students were almost lazy and unlike the talented, willing group she had last year. The sophomore students were a group the young teacher found to be almost overly confident after moving from freshman to middle ground.

Unlike her past class, which was Seminar and motivated, they were not interested in the classic works of Charles Dickens and "Great Expectations"; rather, they were immersed in signing up for sports, school dances and who had 'ummed' who, a childish term for sex.

Was there ever such a time when _she_ was like this? Carefree, listless, unconcerned with schoolwork and a boring teacher.

This thought, of course, led Miss Haruno to picture Sasuke. Young. (Could Uchiha Sasuke have ever been a child once? A very small child? It was incredibly difficult to think about.)

He was only 14, a new tenth grade student. Smart for his age. Plain clothes – but they suited him. Low voice, but it went with his cold heart. Cold from what?

_Cold from them_, these students sitting before her, snickering at 'gay apparel' and long vocabulary words.

In this way, Sakura was pleased, for she was sure she would always know him best.

She really needed to stop doing this to herself. But the reminders were always there. The teacher would find a way of occasionally walking past her old classroom, 233. She walked by when she was going to lunch, _and no, you don't feel bad just because Hatake is teaching there this year, Sakura._

It was true – Kakashi, Mr. Hatake, was a kind teacher, though rather mundane in an odd way, never raising his voice but never needing to from his threatening mask from 'severe allergies and hay fever'.

This Miss Haruno (soon to be Mrs.) found quite hard to believe, though now that they were closer from both teaching the same subject, she never questioned his bizarre lifestyle or excuses. For really, who was she to be calling him strange? She had loved him.

_Had loved_. It was a mantra she repeated dozens of times when Kenji was kissing her, trying to touch her. _Trying_.

Classroom 233. It held too many memories. She would always ask Hatake to meet her to talk in the break room – a room really meant for smoking and gossip, not eating and talking like grown-ups should. But when Sakura would have to go there, she could almost feel Sasuke's presence, staring at her, questioning her with wide, endless eyes, eyes too beautiful for a boy.

And then, she noticed him, and everything changed. A perfect, hidden hope almost strangled to death. A hope she didn't even know she still had until it was almost killed.

It was January. A new student was arriving in two days. Her pupils were buzzing with quiet interest at the idea of a 'new kid'; some girls wanting the student to be a boy in means of a potential date; _all_ of the boys desperately hoping they could finally have "a hot babe" in the class for once.

During a lecture on the importance of Shakespeare's '_Coriolanus_' in modern literature, he walked in, and as it had done almost seven months ago, the teacher's heart turned.

But this time, it was different, for her heart seemed to never beat again with a wild, excited pulse, passionate and raw.

Maybe it was karma. A joke, for her.

"_Now leave me alone . . . Miss Haruno . . . ."_

He had silky black hair, shaggy with spiked ends, framing a pale face, dark and simple clothes, a back pack, a sketchbook, the students were murmuring, she couldn't tell them to quiet down -

Dark, deep eyes. The color of night, obsidian, a raven, stone.

"Hello, teacher. I'm Sai."

A fond little nightmare, a miserable beginning fashioned for a book, but certainly not for a life. Not for the life of Miss Haruno.

Because deep within her, something broke free of its hold, a careful and structured hold, whispering evilly, _you know Sasuke will never come back for old Miss Haruno, gonna-be-wed Har-u-no. _The boy was proof of this thought, a horrible knife digging deep.

Time slowed.

The boys were very disappointed; the girls were somewhat thrilled, though their high hopes fell considerably when he didn't respond to any of their flirtatious gazes.

Just like Sasuke did.

When the class ended, Miss Haruno could barely move. She hadn't said 'class dismissed'. Hadn't put the daily vocabulary word on the board.

Didn't know how to be this person anymore - who really was this Miss Haruno? A teacher with reading glasses and ugly pink hair? A woman who was never happy with anything she was given?

"Miss . . . Haruno."

"What." A voice, the teacher's, equally as sharp as the knife in her throat.

"The worksheet we just did. A question? About the assignment lists, and other things . . . ."

Hesitation, confusion, _fear_. Why? Why was he here, doing this to her? A stupid kid who just so happened to . . . look like him . . . .

_Stop it. _

Sakura controlled herself. It was Sasuke telling her to come back to her senses.

"Of course. C-come over to my desk."

And with that, time sped forward, summer became fall, fall to winter, a wedding, a new couple, and the world did not crash down upon her shoulders.

Sakura knew that, even if it did, Sasuke would drag her out and help her, would always be there, not in this boy, but within her, special, protected. She was his protector.

---


	3. Chapter 3

**Fool's Paradise**

by Shelby

summary: she didn't want to be 'Miss Haruno' to him . . . but _Sakura_, sexy, alluring Sakura. AU. Konoha high school fic.

rating: T

[a/n: though it isn't the new pairing, there is some KakaSaku]

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"I hope she'll be a fool --

that's the best thing a girl can be in this world,

a beautiful little fool."

-from _The Great Gatsby _by F. Scott Fitzgerald

---

Her New Hair was now cropped close, like Daisy Buchanan without the curls; her Old Hair had fallen to the floor in choppy tendrils like salmon colored snakes.

It had . . . taken some getting used to, but she would smile at her reflection. A bright pink bob, sleek against her neck.

Sakura felt renewed.

Perhaps it was envisioning flapper girls, with heavy black beads around their necks and pageboy caps on their heads, as she read 'The Great Gatsby' to her class that prompted Sakura to go into the salon on an ordinary Wednesday, and come home a completely different person. She had left her Old Self, the timid and day-dreaming Miss Haruno behind in the hairdresser's chair, between the woman getting a perm and the girl getting a dye job.

But perhaps it was because she wanted to be different, because the old her, the _real_ her, was only meant for _him_.

The new child, the sullen boy with artistic talent who didn't care to read books (this was enough for Sakura to dislike him), Sai – he was always a constant reminder, of the past and the future, a dull and bleak future where her husband was working till night and her child was asleep in the next room.

Before her New Hair, Sakura looked at herself in the mirror and remembered the way she wore her hair each day last year, when Sasuke was her student, her affection, the only-thing-that-made-it-worthwhile.

I wore it for him, Sakura had mused when she pulled it back into a style she rarely desired to do, a french twist.

Her memory was, all at once, flooded with the beautiful image of the Uchiha, achingly.

Sakura's hair had been in a french twist the day of the soccer meet, last year – could it have really been one entire year ago, four seasons gone by? - and as she sat in the stands, her hair was draped over her left shoulder in that prettily painful twist.

She could remember the way his muscles, lean and wiry, were evident beneath his playing uniform, his pale skin looking beautifully white beneath the threateningly gray sky; her black skirt pushing the limit at being too short, her stockings prettily sheer -

- too many memories – even in her hair.

The new boy, Sai, would stare at Sakura, his eyes always blank, void of feeling, of anything. No. He simply couldn't, _wouldn't_ understand her.

If she wore her hair for him any way he would certainly feel nothing. It wouldn't give him the pleasure it had given Sasuke to see her looking beautiful, and Sakura knew that Sasuke had thought she was beautiful with her hair in a bun or braided or twisted back because his eyes would follow her across the room, never leaving her once as she held a yardstick in her hand and explained a comma splice.

Sakura _had_ to cut it.

It was the boy's fault, not her's. The imposter in the fifth row.

She was being eaten away.

---

In truth, Sakura did not notice when Kakashi Hatake looked at her.

The wedding ceremony was in a few months; she was being plagued by the women in her family to go dress shopping, to start preparing a theme, to find a bakery for the cake.

She hoped it would rain.

Meanwhile, her life was filled with grading papers, with handing out paper back novels and giving pop quizzes and making up tests based on old wealth versus new wealth, and the significance of Tom Sawyer in American literature.

Kakashi would watch Sakura, his eyes trained on her – but what was there to desire? The curves was soft, and subtle, like that of a young girl's; her breasts were small, and her skin fair, painted with a light blush on her cheeks.

Sakura hardly had the time to notice a man so subtle, so indifferent as Kakashi Hatake. Yet he still took notice of her, of her short hair and her beautiful black dress that fell in a swishing hemline just above her knee.

"Your hair. You cut it."

Sakura was in Hatake's room again; she had a familiar feeling of nostalgia as she remembered debating with Sasuke about_ The Scarlet Letter _here_,_ making her wish he would no longer be a ghost of her memory -

"It's different. I like it."

She had been talking with Hatake more often . . . and it wasn't always about their students.

At times, when Sakura would be chained to her desk, grading assignments and worksheets about grammar, she and Hatake would discuss lesson plans, their best students with the best grades and those who were too heedless to pass. Their classrooms were so close by; they taught the same subject. It was a natural progression.

But sometimes, when Sakura wanted to have company, or rather just a person to speak with, Hatake was there; they would talk of their lives, their plans for the weekend and often with his cynical humor, Kakashi would talk about his love life, which occasionally made Sakura laugh.

"You really think so?" Sakura asked as she continued to hum "Reverie." Outside, the track team jogged by through the hallways, their footsteps dull behind the closed door. It was raining.

"I do," Kakashi said. He approached her, carefully. He couldn't see the ring on her finger, hidden behind her back.

Or maybe he did. Maybe he didn't care.

Sakura stopped humming. She left off near the end of the song, a piano tune, her favorite Debussy to play.

"You have a beautiful voice, Sakura." Her senses were filled with him, with Hatake, things that Sakura didn't care to notice; he smelled of clove cigarettes, of fresh air and wet pavements. Her heart thrummed.

"Don't flatter me, Hatake," she whispered, her breath ghosting against his cheek.

"Don't come into my classroom uninvited, Haruno," he said, and pulled off his mask.

The moment was all-too-familiar.

But when Hatake – when Kakashi kissed her, hesitantly and carefully, Sakura, in spite of herself, smiled lightly and kissed him back. She could pretend, to her fancy, that it was Sasuke again, that he had come back for her only, that he had come back simply to kiss her. Or she could relive that moment before, one year ago, all over again.

Kakashi was quiet, intelligent, sad; he was almost the same, the same as _him_, and the line would blur when Sakura closed her eyes.

It was a nice, quiet dream.

---

It was Thursday night. She had been expected to be home by five; make dinner by seven; read a novel and go to sleep by ten.

Sakura never went home.

It was almost the end of the year, and Hatake proved to be . . . a nice distraction.

Instead of remembering the boy in her class, _Sai_, the name Sakura dreaded to speak aloud (as it felt like poison on her lips), she would think of Kakashi, and of Sasuke, and how she wanted desperately for them to be the same person.

Kakashi would come into her classroom when all the students had gone and the teachers were ready to go home to their husbands and wives, to their children and to the family dog; he pushed her against the whiteboard, kissing her neck and gently cupping her nonexistent breast.

And Sakura would wish, as Kakashi would ask of her kindly to go with him places, to a movie, to the car – to his house . . . that for just one moment, he could be Sasuke.

It was a selfish wish. But Sakura could never purge her mind of him.

Sasuke haunted her. And she loved it.

Maybe that was why Sakura allowed, as the weeks went on and the projects where students would put on plays and do Powerpoints and poems all passed, for Kakashi to take off the band on her finger and touch her a little more each time.

Kakashi had a Honda, in dark gray; a drizzle hid them in a gentle curtain from the outside world.

When he led her to it, pulled her into the passenger seat as her brief case and his were thrown carelessly into the backseat, Kakashi said nothing, and Sakura said nothing as they drove onto the back roads.

Their unspoken arrangement had grown into something resembling a relationship; though Sakura didn't think of them as anything. She still had her fiance, who sat across from her each morning at the breakfast table and asked his routine monotonous questions, the same as always – about what she planned to do at work, if she wanted to go shopping, or out to eat.

But Kakashi hardly asked her those kind of stupid questions – just like Sasuke never would, Sakura's mind whispered. He only wanted to know about her. What made her happy, her favorite poems and what she loved to write, if she kept a diary and if she watched cult classics; what made her hot, what turned her on. Sakura imagined that being with Kakashi was what being with Sasuke would be like.

When Sakura watched Kakashi unlock the door, she entered a new realm, a special kind of dream.

"Kakashi. Do you _really_ like me?" Sakura said nonchalantly as she took off her rain jacket and put it by the door.

The man was silent as he removed his mask, his jacket, his boots and tie. "Do you like me, Sakura?" He always avoided the question, turned it around on her. It made her frown.

"I'm not sure, sensei," Her voice was calm, yet filled with a strange sense of meanness from a place she couldn't find.

Kakashi smiled.

When he took her to the bedroom, Sakura let Kakashi touch her, let the boundaries go fully, and let herself sink further into her own wishes, and wants.

She needed it to be Sasuke nipping her neck, his tongue lightly trailing her jaw and kissing her breast.

She wished it was Sasuke touching her sides, his slightly rough hands trailing down her stomach; travelling lower to rub the heat between her thighs.

She pictured Sasuke holding her hips, almost bruising her, going inside of her, making her shudder against his chest as her nails dug into his back, leaving perfect skin marred.

Time slowed, disappeared; then returned.

When it was over, when everything was finished and Kakashi lay beside her, Sakura no longer let him touch her. Sakura felt empty. She knew he wasn't Sasuke. Her favorite student, the boy with the beautiful eyes – he was being replaced, fading away.

It was her own fault. She cried.

* * *

[**Important note****:** I got a really sweet PM from Luciteart, and she inspired me to attempt writing part 3 of Fool's Paradise. And in just a few hours, it actually turned out to be something good. I'm sorry I haven't updated, but I have been having some family issues.

And do not worry - with the upcoming chapters,_ SasuSaku will prevail!!_ This, I think, is the last of KakaSaku, but as you can see, Sakura's obsession prompts her to do some bad, strange things, so it was necessary for the plot.]


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